A Rival Creation

by Marika Cobbold

  Veena got up and planted a kiss on Ted’s thinning hair. ‘You’re sweet, but I’m OK. I just like to get out of the house, get some fresh air.’

  Ted sighed. ‘I suppose I can’t stop you. But I really would prefer it if you’d let me come along too.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I enjoy being on my own.’ Veena got a far-away look in her eyes. ‘Being alone, not always surrounded by relatives, was one of the things I longed for back home. I even shared my bed with my two little brothers.’ She turned her eyes on him. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be watched all the time, how one longs to just be left alone.’ She smiled. ‘So don’t worry. Besides, you shouldn’t be seen with me. It’s dangerous enough for you with all the people coming and going in this place. Who’d ever be a vicar?’

  ‘Who?’ Ted thought bitterly as the door slammed shut behind her. Since Veena had arrived in his life he had grown even more disenchanted with his work as Vicar of Tollymead and Greenway. His two years had made absolutely no difference to life in the parish. The congregation in the two churches had neither increased nor fallen off, the same faces met him at each service, their expressions suggesting placid forbearance. Vicars came and vicars went, he felt them thinking, but Sunday morning was for church. But now at last he was doing something. For the first time since he came to Tollymead, he was doing more than waste his time and the church’s money. He had got in touch with the Organization through a Methodist minister friend, and they had written back with a list of clergy sympathetic to the cause. They had suggested the girl be moved as soon as possible, as no-one should stay in the same safe house for more than a month. By then the risk of discovery increased dramatically. In the meantime, the Organization’s legal advisers would start looking into her chances of being allowed to remain in the country. But Veena had become so distressed at the suggestion of moving that, not unwillingly, Ted had said she could stay for a little while longer. Dismissal from the church, prison, what did he care? He was at last doing God’s work.

  Veena hurried down Vicarage Lane and up to the car that was parked on the curb. With a quick look round to check that she was not watched, she opened the passenger door and stepped into the front seat, slamming the door closed as the car started up its engine.

  Village Diary

  Tollymead: Police believe that children playing with fireworks were responsible for the fire at one of the outbuildings at Glebe House on Bonfire Night. Luckily the fire brigade arrived within minutes, saving much of the building, used as a workshop, and its contents.

  True to form, Tollymead residents have already begun the task of restoration. Filing away a freshly typed document, American scriptwriter Anne Havesham told the Diary:

  ‘A fire destroyed my father’s career. A brilliant man, an academic, he had been working for five years on his thesis on “The Influence of the Digestive System in the Lives and Works of American Artists”, (apparently Henry James was but one of many great writers suffering from chronic constipation). The thesis, which would have led to a university post, was only days from completion when a fire in his study destroyed his only copy. After that he was a broken man, remaining for the rest of his life a teacher in a small town high school.’

  With the memory of her father still haunting her, Ms Havesham, once news of the fire reached her, wasted no time in offering her help. There is still work to be done, copying notes from damaged files and sorting seed trays, so anyone who can spare some time will be most welcome.

  Fourteen

  Liberty had been helping Evelyn clear up after the fire, but when she arrived on Saturday afternoon she found several people already assembled in the sitting-room, working away like over-grown Santa’s helpers, typing, sorting, cutting. Evelyn herself was perched on top of some steps, in the adjoining library, a box file in her hand. Seeing Liberty, she gave her a wave with a paper, its edges blackened like a slice of burnt toast. ‘I’m afraid some of Father’s books will have to go to make room for my stuff. Isn’t this marvellous though? All these kind people turning up out of the blue to give me a hand, and I thought it would have to be just us and Oscar struggling on. Whoever would have thought it of Tollymead?’

  ‘I don’t know why you should say that.’ Nancy Sanderson, who had arrived with the vicar in tow, looked annoyed.

  ‘Pardon me,’ Neville Pyke, carrying a stack of box files, brushed past.

  ‘I came straight over from court,’ Nancy said to Liberty. ‘But I see that after all this, the Havesham woman herself hasn’t bothered to turn up.’

  ‘What about the Havesham woman?’ Evelyn called from the top of the steps.

  ‘It was in the Village Diary.’ As Evelyn looked blank, Nancy continued in an exaggerated clear voice, ‘You know, in the Tribune, your nephew’s paper. Didn’t you see? Some sort of appeal on your behalf.’

  Evelyn climbed down gingerly from the steps, a stack of paperbacks clutched to her chest. ‘I only take the paper because Oscar’s editing it, but I can’t say I read it cover to cover.’ Remembering Victoria, who sat at the other end of the sitting-room, leafing through a copy of The National Geographic, she added quickly, ‘It’s got a darn sight better since he took over though, I must say.’

  Victoria turned and looked up. ‘Hi Liberty,’ then she turned to Evelyn.

  ‘You should read the Diary. I wouldn’t know half the things that go on in this village without it. It was quite sweet, actually. Whoever it is had put in a whole piece about how Oscar saved the day, being first at the scene of the fire, and all that. Of course he made them edit it out, you know what he’s like, Evelyn.’ She uncoiled from the seat. ‘Anyone for coffee? How many are we? One, two, three, four, five…’ She counted them out with her red-tipped index finger in the air, ‘… nine,’ and sauntered out to the kitchen.

  Liberty looked round for somewhere to put her portable typewriter, as Evelyn stomped across the room to her with a heap of papers.

  ‘Could you be a brick and save what you can of these notes, and these too if you’ve got time. I literally pulled them from the flames.’ The second pile of papers looked as if they had donned combat fatigue, the white paper mottled with parchment-yellow and brown. Most of the writing was visible, however, and Liberty began to copy down Evelyn’s wayward hand, turning the damaged pages carefully; the heat had made them as fragile as dried flowers. Victoria returned with a tray. Liberty took a mug commemorating, rather optimistically she thought, the Coronation of Edward VIII. ‘Where did you get this?’ She raised it above her head for Evelyn to see.

  Evelyn looked up from a stack of books. ‘Oh that, I got it years ago. A local pottery was flogging them off cheap. They had rather miscalculated on that one. I’m not sure it’s not the last, though, all the others seem to have got broken.’

  Victoria looked sharply at Evelyn. ‘They could be worth something, you know. It’s a shame you broke them. I have to say, my mother positively imprinted on me that you can’t be too careful with your things.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Evelyn said, ‘you can.’

  ‘Oscar’s very interested in memorabilia,’ Victoria carried on, undeterred.

  ‘Hideous word that: memorabilia,’ Evelyn said dreamily. ‘Like authorization, or implementation, which always makes me think of something rather intimate you do to cows.’

  Victoria was not really listening, Liberty thought, and her lovely face seemed oddly vacant in repose, as if it were a photograph rather than the woman herself. She stopped typing and asked quietly, ‘Victoria, what made Oscar leave Fleet Street or Wapping or whatever and come down here?’

  Victoria did not seem to mind being asked, just surprised. ‘I don’t really know. He had some sort of a crisis,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He was in a terrible state, crying and everything. You wouldn’t think that, looking at him, would you? I mean he seems so in control.’

  ‘Oh absolutely,’ Liberty said, feeling uncomfortably like she was betraying a confidence just by listening.

  ‘Anyway,�
� Victoria continued, ‘he said he needed a change. I didn’t mind. I was fed up with London anyway. And the house prices in town… I mean, the difference between what you get for your money down here and up there. Anyway he’s fine now. I expect it was some sort of mid-life crisis. I told him at the time, “don’t look back.” I mean you can’t change anything, so what’s the good? Live for today, that’s my motto.’

  Victoria, Liberty thought, lacked curiosity.

  ‘So where is Ms Havesham?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘She’s no doubt busy with her television show,’ Neville said. ‘Who knows, we might all end up on telly ourselves. Mrs Pyke is very excited about it all. She’s very keen on television, Mrs Pyke. No, a busy lady like Miss Havesham, we must make allowances.’

  Evelyn didn’t seem to be listening, but she nodded agreement all the same. Liberty nodded too. For some reason that she could not understand, she saw Oscar before her, naked, about to lie down on top of her in bed, as she nodded. Maybe that was what head banging was all about: inducing erotic fantasies. She thought she might ask Johnny next time he called.

  Ted Brain, who had worked diligently on a stack of water-damaged papers, got up to leave. ‘Busy evening ahead,’ he muttered nervously to the room in general as he made his way sideways through the room. Someone said, ‘It’s getting dark,’ and as the light was switched on, Oscar’s naked body evaporated. Liberty sighed and carried on with her typing. Shortly after that a couple of the ladies began to leave, muttering about tea and supper to prepare. No-one would say they did not care to walk through the village in the dark. Ever since Liberty moved back down to Tollymead, she had been waiting for someone to admit to being frightened of being alone in their house at night, or worried about a late walk home from a party or Evensong, the way everyone did in London. But no-one ever did. ‘This is the country dear!’ In fact, Liberty thought sourly, they would step over a battered corpse in their sturdy walking shoes to proclaim how safe it was. To really shine, you should say you never locked your back door.

  ‘Street lights,’ Liberty said now. ‘That’s what we need, good, bright street lights.’

  Several outraged faces turned on her. ‘Street lights!’ repeated one of the ladies, a woman whose name Liberty did not know, but who always ran the White Elephant stall at the Summer Fête. ‘This is the country, dear.’

  Liberty looked around her with a contented smile, she liked predictability. ‘I take the same view on roads as I do on Christmas trees,’ she said, ‘the brighter the better. Refinement should only be carried so far.’

  Neville put down a stack of neatly copied notes. ‘Mrs Pyke would like street lights. It’s comforting when you lie awake at night, to look out and see a light outside your window.’ No-one took any notice of him. Then poor Neville did not really belong, Liberty thought, he was just indispensable, like an expatriate worker in Kuwait.

  ‘You know, that’s just how I feel,’ she said to him. ‘I’d love to have a light outside my window at night.’

  ‘Well then you should live in a town,’ Nancy said. ‘’Bye Evelyn. I hope I’ve been of some help.’ She turned round again in the doorway. ‘Maybe you should take this accident as a sign to slow down. You’ve done your bit. And more…’ Liberty heard her mutter.

  Liberty was the last to leave. She stood with Evelyn in the middle of the room, surveying the afternoon’s work. Freshly typed pages lay stacked on the large, round table by the window. By the bookcase stood ten box files, each containing notes and news clips that had been rescued from the flames and from the water, all sorted through and filed. ‘I’m touched,’ Evelyn said. ‘Damn it, I’m touched.’

  There was a knock on the door and Liberty went to answer. It was Oscar.

  ‘Victoria said she was going to come here to help,’ he said stepping inside. ‘I thought I’d pick her up.’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry, she will be upset to have missed you. She got a lift with Nancy Sanderson. She was worried she wouldn’t have supper ready for you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Oscar did not move for the door. ‘She’s lovely isn’t she?’ he said suddenly. He could as well have been saying he had a bit of a cold, Liberty thought, if one was listening just to the tone of his voice.

  ‘Yes, yes, she really is,’ Liberty nodded, adding so as not to disappoint him, ‘And so nice too.’ She would have liked to ask his opinion about how far one should go in lying to spare someone’s feelings, but this of course, was not the moment.

  ‘Yes, she really is a very nice person. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve someone like her.’ Oscar sounded as if he took exception to such preferential treatment.

  Evelyn called from upstairs, ‘Come inside and help yourself to a drink, you know where everything is. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  In the kitchen, Oscar poured them both a gin and tonic. ‘I mustn’t stay,’ he said, promptly sitting down at the kitchen table.

  ‘No, no of course not.’ Liberty sidled onto the chair opposite.

  Oscar stared down into his glass, then with a small smile he looked across at her. He really had such sad eyes – beautiful, sad, cornflower blue eyes. If I didn’t know better, she thought, I’d say he is as unhappy as I am.

  ‘Thank you for helping Evelyn,’ he said. ‘Sunday tomorrow, so I’ll be able to come and do some carrying.’

  ‘There were about ten of us here today, would you believe it?’

  ‘I noticed the call for help in the Village Diary,’ Oscar said. ‘I didn’t think Tollymead went in for this sort of neighbourly act.’

  ‘Well it doesn’t,’ Liberty said. ‘You get to read the Diary, do you?’

  ‘I see everything that goes into the paper,’ Oscar said with a small smile.

  ‘Don’t you get bored?’ The question slipped out, and she regretted it as soon as it was said. ‘What I mean is, it’s all very different from being foreign editor of a big national paper.’ Feeling the heat in the puckered skin on her cheek, she said quickly, ‘Of course it must be enormously rewarding, running your own paper. Local papers perform an invaluable service to the community and you are right at the heart of it—’

  Oscar seemed amused by her embarrassment. ‘I enjoy the work. I needed the change.’ He looked up at her with those bright blue eyes, leaving Liberty wondering if he really was as unaware of his looks as he seemed to be. She realized he was speaking to her again.

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’ She pulled a little face. Oscar’s grin got wider.

  ‘I asked,’ he repeated mildly, ‘if you thought we might yet turn Tollymead into “Ambridge”?’

  Liberty thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know that it’s not just a last stand,’ she said finally. ‘Like a family of grazing microwavers solemnly munching their way through the Sunday roast with the telly silenced in a corner. Just death throes.’

  ‘It’s always easier to create a new set of values than to retrieve old ones,’ Oscar said. ‘Your average punter probably thinks the nice piece of Brazilian rain forest mahogany in the sitting-room is a worse crime than a spot of Saturday-night-and-nothing-to-do granny bashing.’ He grinned at her. ‘Can’t you just see some smart bastard in court: “I beg you to consider, m’lud, that rape does less damage to the ozone layer than farting.”’

  He made Liberty laugh, and as he drained his glass and stood up, she said, ‘Don’t go.’ Looking down, she muttered, ‘I mean, would you like another drink?’

  He put his hand briefly on her shoulder. ‘I’m driving.’ In the hall he called up to Evelyn, ‘I’m off, but I’ll be over tomorrow.’ He turned to Liberty and said quietly, ‘Will you be here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Liberty smiled at him. ‘I’ll be here.’

  She stood looking after him, feeling as if she had just missed the marching band, as, brasses gleaming and flags waving, they turned the corner out of sight. Calling goodbye to Evelyn, she walked the few yards home. She boiled herself an egg and sat down to read a book of interviews with famous authors. She needed to cry.

&n
bsp; Victoria greeted Oscar in the doorway, dressed in an ankle-length fur coat she had acquired long before she even met him. One of the first things she had said to him was how unfair it was that now she finally owned a fur coat, wearing it had become as antisocial as dishing up under-cooked chicken at a dinner party. Then, he had thought her complaint charming. Now he just hated the coat. ‘Going out?’ he asked, trying to sound as if he cared.

  Victoria smiled, a slow, long smile as she opened the coat, letting it slip off her shoulders and down on to the floor so that she stood there, naked but for her high-heeled pumps.

  Fifteen

  ‘It’ll be “Jennifer’s Diary” before we know it,’ Alistair Partridge, the assistant editor of the Tribune handed the latest Diary entry from Tollymead to Oscar.

  It was heart-warming to see so many people turning up to help Evelyn Brooke restore her files and work notes. Decades of research, much of it to be used in Miss Brooke’s forthcoming book on organic farming, is now saved and in good order.

  Are we dipping into the past and retrieving old community values, or are we waking up to the future of a new, caring decade? Are we looping the loop? No matter, what counts is that in Tollymead we care.

  That happiness can come through helping others is not a new notion, but is one that seems increasingly forgotten these days. But newly-arrived advertising executive Laura Brown, one of Miss Brooke’s helpers, found love across a stack of singed documents. At the opposite end of the large rosewood table sat Oliver Bliss, marine biologist and amateur artist. By the end of the afternoon, Oliver was so taken by Laura that he begged to be allowed to paint her portrait.

  ‘She looked like a land-locked mermaid, with her rippling hair and sea-green dress. I just had to paint her,’ Oliver said. Now, just two weeks later, Laura and Oliver have announced their engagement. Everyone in Tollymead is delighted, including the two ladies of the village’s Neighbourhood Watch scheme who almost made a citizen’s arrest on the couple as they enjoyed a romantic walk together.